Other Objects

MARKEVIČIUS Nerimantas, Paramedic assistant, student

I was on duty at the first aid station that night. When the first shots rang out, they began to call all the ambulances to the TV tower, as there were a lot of wounded. On the way there, I couldn't believe that in our time, a time of peace, there could be wounded people.

When we got there, the first thing I saw was a man approaching us with his head cut open. The wound was so deep that the bone was fractured and you could feel the surface of his brain pulsating, and blood was pouring out. I bandaged him. I heard people shouting on the hill that there were a lot of injured people there. Slipping, I climbed up the hill. I was numb for some time from what I saw there. I saw people standing, and then a tank fired and three or four of them fell as if they had been mowed down. Then a man with a bruised face and a punctured ear drum came over. I sent him down to the ambulance, and could already see people carrying a boy over to me. He was maybe thirteen years old, and his leg had been shot. Only when I arrived at the Red Cross with the wounded did I finally understand what was going on. The corridor was full of injured people, and the doctors were stitching their wounds right there because all of the operating rooms were already being used.

We rushed back to the tower. There were a lot of ambulances, and the wounded people had already been taken away. Together with a few doctors, I went with a white flag with a red cross on it and began to ask that we be let into the tower. An officer went to discuss it with their chief, but when he returned he said that the paratroopers wouldn't let anyone in.When we went up to the paratroopers, we saw an elderly woman on her knees before a soldier, crying: „My son is in the army now, and you're shooting at us! Shoot at me too!" Then that soldier turned to the side and loaded his gun.

Seeing us, the people on Konarskio Street made way, but then a soldier ran out of the crowd and began to wave his gun for us to go further towards the soldiers. At first we were a little confused, but when the soldier began to wave his hands to show us where to go, we followed him. The soldier led us through the group of „Jedinstvo" members and through the tanks, where we hadn't been able to get through for a long time - we had tried to get by them for maybe ten minutes - and we got closer to the TV building. Opening the door of the ambulance I still couldn't understand what was happening when some soldiers ran out shouting in Russian: ..Doctor! Quick! He's dying!" I ran out and grabbed my doctor's bag, and the driver took the stretcher. Just then, the soldiers carried out one of their own guys on two boards. They brought him over and put him down: look at him. He was stripped to his waist and was already dead. His pupils were dilated and he had no pulse. There was a gun shot wound in his back that was bleeding heavily. They began to tell me to bring the soldier to the hospital as quick as possible. I said that the soldier was dead, but they made me take him all the same. A soldier with a tommy gun got into the ambulance too - he didn't have any insignia, but he was on the older side so I assumed that he was an officer.

On the way I couldn't contain myself, so I turned around and said: „Just look at what you've done! You kill your own people!" I gave the soldier more insulin, gave him a heart massage, and bandaged his wound even though it was already too late. The corridor was full of wounded people lying on the floor. We carried that paratrooper to the end of the corridor and put him next to another corpse, - I think it was Titas Masiulis. The officer took off his helmet, bowed his head, and dropped his hands - he was deeply moved. He began to explain to us that he hadn't been shooting. It turned out that they had been given instructions from the evening that they were strictly forbidden to shoot. He undid the cartridge clip of his gun to show us that all the live cartridges were still in it - that he really didn't shoot.